Apple today announced iBooks 2 for iPad, featuring iBooks textbooks, an entirely new kind of textbook that's dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. iBooks textbooks offer iPad users gorgeous, fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more. iBooks textbooks can be kept up to date, don't weigh down a backpack and never have to be returned. Leading education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson will deliver educational titles on the iBookstore with most priced at $14.99 or less, and with the new iBooks Author, a free authoring tool available today, anyone with a Mac can create stunning iBooks textbooks.

“Education is deep in Apple’s DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Now with iBooks 2 for iPad, students have a more dynamic, engaging and truly interactive way to read and learn, using the device they already love.”

The new iBooks 2 app is available today as a free download from the App Store™.

I would point out that there's already roughly zero entry to becoming an author now with eBooks and print-on-demand publishing, so this doesn't really change anything other than making it easier to get into text book authoring. But, it's still up to professors and schools which books to select, so amateurish garbage will never be picked up in the first place.

"apple is trying to push apple, but is that really the best solution for this?"

What else are they going to push?

Like with every other recent apple product, they'll test the waters, gain market share ... and numerous other companies will come along and do it equally well for much less $$$. There's room for everyone in the sandbox.

Apple makes it very difficult for people to sell books on their store. People need a tax id. This is especially cumbersome for non US citizens who have to go through a lot of red tape to get an ITIN. The other option is to offer the book free.